


The Legend of Lichbane

by blivengo



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Based On a D&D Game, D&D Backstory, Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, Fantasy, Gen, Horror, RPG, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 01:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16187240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blivengo/pseuds/blivengo
Summary: A dark fairy tale of six brave adventurers who seek to purge an ancient evil from a frigid forest...





	The Legend of Lichbane

Every place that’s existed long enough has a story. It’s often a heroic tale that’s been passed down so many generations that the original details are skewed in such a way that the truth has been all but completely replaced with chivalry, grandeur, and triumph. Lichbane is no exception. The story parents tell their children around the hearth, and bards use to liven up a sober crowd, always starts in some long-lost era when the area was home to an evil so powerful that no one, not even the most valorous knight, would set foot anywhere nearby. No one, that is, until the noble paladin Martas Ableton vowed to purge the land and establish a much-needed haven for the poor, hard-working souls of the northern frostlands. Armed only with Truth and Light – and his golden shield and unbreakable mace, Allhammer – Martas led a courageous group of devout adventurers into the forbidden lands to slay whatever resided at the heart of its corruption. This is one version of that story:

Six brave souls ventured forth from the relative safety of their southern citadel and into the cursed wilderness of the hostile north. Initially, the party met with no resistance, and Martas began to think the only evil lurking there was unfounded fear…until the voices started.

As the sun loomed high on their third day of trudging through an increasingly dense, decaying forest, one of Martas’s companions, Frederick Yaurel, yelled in surprise and whirled about, sword drawn, as if to attack the open air to his right. Noticing simultaneously that there was no one there and that the others had all stopped to look at him, his eyes went wide, and he said, “you didn’t hear that?”

“Hear what?” Asked Tannel Swift, hesitantly, as everyone else just shook their heads in bewilderment. Sensing no one was going to chime in, she pressed, “I was right beside you, all I heard was the same eerie silence we’ve been hearing for days.” Her face softened, and she put a hand on his shoulder before asking, “are you okay?”

Fred, a broad-shouldered, hardened man that was notoriously quick to scuffle, shrugged off her touch and sniffed, “I’m fine, but I know what I heard. If it’s one of you playing a trick, I won’t have it!” With that, he narrowed his eyes and waved his weapon at the group.

Martas stepped toward him from his lead position and put his bare hand on riled man’s blade, pushing it down. “No one said anything, Fred, now put that thing away and let’s keep moving.” Frederick harrumphed, but complied, mumbling to himself that he knew what he heard. There was no further incident until late that night.

As the embers of the evening’s fire smoldered, sending a thin tendril of smoke into the darkness, Tannel crept away from camp at the bidding of a giggly whisper only she could hear. It started shortly after she took watch and had become simply too much for her to ignore. When she’d put some distance between herself and her sleeping companions, the ranger picked up her pace, pushing past the thickets and branches like a drunk making his way through a crowded tavern. _Hurry, Tanny, you’re almost there!_ The voice called in her head, and she broke into a run. Just ahead, an unnatural glow lit a clearing where a young girl in a simple, yellow dress was sitting on her legs, seemingly playing at a puppet show. Tannel stopped short and gasped, not feeling the cuts and bruises she’d endured, only the pang of sadness and the impossible hope that this was somehow real.

“Geanie?” She meant to whisper, but a dry, nearly inaudible creak is all that escaped. She tried to lick her lips but had no spit to spare.

Without diverting her attention from what she was doing, the little girl said, “hi, sissy,” and then giggled. Geanie had always been plagued with the giggles. Especially in situations where she most certainly shouldn’t – like when she’d been dead for over a decade. But, somehow, either by the grace of the gods or something far less divine, there she was: sitting in her favorite dress, focused on play as if nothing had happened and this was a normal afternoon back in Prairievale. But it wasn’t. It was the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere.

“I buried you.” Tannel managed, and then dropped to her knees.

“Don’t say scary things, Tanny, I don’t like it.” No giggle this time, and the girl’s – Geanie’s – small hands went still in front of her.

“I…” Tannel uttered, meaning to repeat her declaration but unable to bring herself to upset her little sister. Tears stung her eyes, and should have been streaking her face, but instead froze before falling. The air had become impossibly frigid, even for the north, and seemed to not only carry the stench of putrefaction but somehow be dead itself.

From behind her, Tannel felt an ominous presence, but was paralyzed with cold fear and unable to even turn her head to glimpse the owner of the soft, gravelly voice when it spoke. “She’s mine, Miss Swift, and, now, so are you.” At this, Geanie began a fit of giggles that turned into a maniacal cackle. The girl then stood, revealing that her playthings hadn’t been burlap puppets with mismatched button eyes, but the disemboweled remains of poor Frederick Yaurel. As she slowly turned, Tannel saw that blood and gore stained her sister’s dress from hem to collar, and that her face – not _her_ face at all, but a putrid mess of rotten flesh and maggots – was also dripping fresh blood. Geanie hadn’t just been playing, no, she’d been _eating_ the dead man.

Grinning at the look of disgusted understanding on Tannel’s face, Geanie said, “don’t worry, sissy, once you’re dead it doesn’t hurt at all!” Geanie began giggling and skipping toward her sister, then lunged to close the distance, launching herself teeth-first onto Tannel’s throat. Just before the combination of pain, shock, and loss of blood took the ranger’s consciousness, she noticed Fred beginning to stand.

*******

The party woke to find two of its members missing. “There’s no sign of a struggle or haste, sir, it looks like…” Gothal Wake, the youngest yet most imposing member of the group, an unorthodox fighter, but steadfastly loyal to the cause, shook his head and sighed before going on, “it looks like they just got up and left.”

“Aye, with nothing but the shirts on their backs,” added Reska Verdune, a rogue and former sell sword that pledged her life to Martas after he spared her the noose for treason. She pointed toward Tannel and Frederick’s still-unfurled bedrolls and the neat piles of gear beside them. “Think they went off for a shag and fell asleep in some cozy den somewhere?” Reska snorted, but no one else so much as grinned.

“No, Reska, I do not,” said Martas, and the woman hung her head like a scolded child. “Thomas found two trails with fresh sign both heading the same direction. We’ll pair up and follow each, notching the trees so we can double back and meet here before nightfall. Reska with me following this path,” Martas gestured toward the path Tannel had used to slip away, then splayed his index and middle fingers and pointed at Thomas and Gothal, “you two on the other. Get your things, we leave at once.” There was a chorus of “sir,” and then everyone got to work.

Only minutes later, camp was broken, and the search was on. Reska lead Martas down a windy path that became more deliberate as they got further into the forest. Where the sign had been sparse – Reska nearly lost the trail twice – it was beginning to look like a spooked beast had run through with its head down. Branches were snapped forward everywhere, and one of the bandannas Tannel wore on her wrists had caught and left a large piece hanging on a sheared twig. “Looks like she was in an awful damn hurry,” said Reska as she pocketed the faded blue scrap of bandanna and hacked a notch in the tree where she’d plucked it.

“Yes, but toward something or away from it,” Martas mused, and Reska knew better than to answer, even though a witty remark about snogging came to mind, drawing a grin on her face that, thankfully, Martas couldn’t see.

“We’ll know more soon enough,” Reska inclined her head forward toward an area where sunlight was having better luck breaking through the canopy, “looks like there’s a clearing ahead.”

“Aye. We’ll know something, or we’ll lose her, like so many others have been lost in this damned wood.” Martas made a nasally sigh and added, “come on, let’s get to it.”

Martas and Reska spilled into the clearing at not quite a run to find Thomas and Gothal staring agape at the scene before them: fresh blood covered everything, but in such a deliberate, meticulous way that it was impossible to know what had happened. In the center of the area, even though the group had seen no sign of wildlife since crossing the would-be threshold of evil, stood an enormous stag – an enormous stag that had been dead a very, very long time. Its eyes were sockets; its stomach had been split and what guts remained where mostly dried and black and left dangling from the wound; the skin was patched with mangy fur and hung on the skeleton like a father’s coat on his young child; yet there it stood, lapping at the sanguinary grass as if it was a delicacy.

“This isn’t right,” Reska whispered through fingers that had involuntarily covered her open mouth.

“I fear our friends are gone,” Martas said somberly. “Let’s get the others and leave thi—” The words caught in his throat as Thomas Merriweather, his right hand and fellow paladin, the man that had been by Martas’s side since Thomas was barely a squire, charged the dead thing, screaming.

The stag didn’t so much as twitch the remnants of its tail as Thomas closed the distance between himself and the creature at a full sprint. Martas wondered briefly if everything was just an illusion conjured up by whatever foul presence they had come to destroy, but as Thomas raised his broadsword overhead with both hands, intent on severing the dead thing’s head, that possibility was brought to ruin. With preternatural speed that was almost imperceptible to the human eye, the stag lowered to a feline crouch, shot forward with lethal force, driving its considerable antlers into Thomas’s midsection, and then threw its head back, ripping the paladin open to the chin. For a moment, Thomas stood there, stunned, attempting to push his insides back where they belonged like someone trying to force a lid onto a too-full barrel; then his brain got the messaged he’d been killed, and he slumped over, splashing into his own gore with a sick, wet thud.

Martas opened his mouth to curse the creature before going in for his own attack, but the stag beat him to the punch – it gaped toward the sky like a wolf howling at a full moon, but the sound that came out was a piercing death scream in Thomas’s voice. The shriek was so loud everyone but Martas covered their ears to muffle it. When it was finished, the stag slowly lowered its head and trained its empty-eyed stare on the group’s leader, keeping its maw locked open. What happened next the remaining adventurers didn’t completely realize until they’d been able to discuss it sometime later after sitting in utter silence around their much smaller camp – in each of their heads, the voice of a different deceased loved one spoke as if standing right behind them: “There is only death for you here. Get out before the sun goes down.” With that, the stag crumbled to dust, and the blood dried black as tar.

Gothal crept toward Thomas’s body, nearly tiptoeing as if trying not to wake him, but Martas called out to him, freezing him midstride. Gothal stared at his leader with a tear-stained face and pleading eyes, but Martas only stared back cold fire. “Come. The devil has shown its hand; we leave this place, now.”

Gothal started walking toward the others, but quickly picked up speed until he was jogging. When he arrived, Martas placed a hand on both his and Reska’s shoulders, closed his eyes, and nodded. After this gesture of shared mourning, he led his reduced party back to their camp site without speaking, and they remained silent until Reska got the nerve to ask about what they’d heard before the stag disappeared.

*******

“We have to leave, Martas! This…this thing is too powerful! We weren’t prepared for this,” said Reska as she sat defeated, her head hung between her knees.

“We _were_ not prepared, but we know what we’re up against now. This necrotic wizard will not defeat us,” Martas countered.

“It won’t defeat me because I’ll be gone,” Reska said, getting up, “come on, Gothal, this isn’t where you should die.” Gothal remained seated, leaning with his head back against a small tree, staring off into the forest as if he hadn’t even heard her. “You know what? Fine…fine. I’m leaving,” Reska said, frustrated, and began walking back the way they’d come.

Martas hurled his golden shield so it sunk into the ground, blocking her path. “You only live because of my mercy, I will not let you throw that away!” Martas glared, breathing heavily through his nose like an angry bull. “We are three days into this cursed wood, if you leave you’ll be picked off and die alone, for nothing. Is that what you want?”

Reska gripped Martas’s shield, thinking to rip it from the ground and hurl it back at him, but she knew he was right. She turned, eyes welling, and said, weakly, “I’m…I’m scared, Martas.”

“Aye, we’re all scared.” Martas drew himself up to his full height and boomed with enough force to snap Gothal from his daze, “but once we beat back our fear, there’ll be nothing left to stand in our way – that is our enemy’s weapon, and I mean for us to grind it down until its blunt and useless.” He clapped his hands together emphatically and continued, “so, let’s get to work.” This garnered a much less enthusiastic chorus of “sir,” but they once again all got to work.

They reinforced their position with a trench lined at the inner edge with forest debris, sharpened branches plunged into the ground and angled toward their would-be attackers, and, most importantly, a powerful magic circle that would protect the party from the undead. By the time they finished, it was nearly sundown. They ate a meager meal of dried rations, and Martas bade his companions get some sleep while they could – come nightfall, they were likely to need all the energy they could muster. After much tossing and turning, Reska and Gothal both managed a thin mask of sleep while Martas remained vigil, using his time to whisper incantations to Allhammer, imbuing it with both magic and the grace of the gods. When the night turned to pitch, even the moon and stars seeming to have abandoned them, and Gothal woke screaming for the long-dead matriarch of his family, Martas knew the time had come.

Slamming Allhammer against his golden shield like a war drum, Martas yelled, “to arms! Tonight we battle, tomorrow we bask in victory!” This shook Gothal from his nightmare, and roused Reska from the shock of being ripped from sleep. Years of training and fighting together kicked in, and the small group was standing in tight formation, weapons at the ready, protecting each other’s back.

There was scarcely a sound save the random crackling of the fire and their own breathing until they started hearing the giggles of a young girl. They were distant but appeared to be coming from everywhere at once. Confused and anxious, Reska started bouncing in her stance and said, “don’t tell me whatever we’re facing is just a damned kid…I don’t want to hav—”

Her voice was drowned out by an unnatural growl followed by the sound of sticks crunching under foot. They turned to the north to see a huge bear silhouetted by firelight as it swiped their sharpened sticks aside like a giant brushing away toothpicks. With another savage growl, it barreled forward, slamming into the magic circle with enough force to topple a building. Reska and Gothal both flinched, but Martas stood fast, knowing his spell would hold – then the creature began pushing against the invisible barrier with all its considerable might, and began coming through.

Martas shoved his shield into the ground so he could use both hands to lift Allhammer overhead and back until it touched below his shoulders. As the bear’s rotting head penetrated the magic circle, Martas brought his weapon down with all his strength, separating head from body and crushing it against the ground with a hollow crunch. Just as the stag had, the bear became dust and disappeared. Emboldened, Martas yelled, “you have no dominion here, fiend! You cannot breach our defenses!”

“You’re right,” the voice of Tannel Swift came calmly from behind him.

“But we can,” Frederick finished. There was a simultaneous sound of two choked groans, and Martas spun on his heels to see the vacant, shocked stares of Reska and Gothal, and the tips of daggers protruding from their now-bloody necks. Behind them, holding the hilts, were Tannel and Frederick, his two friends and comrades in arms whom he’d neglected to disallow safe passage inside his magic circle. The young girl giggled again, closer now, and Tannel and Fred laughed along with her as they pulled their weapons free and watched Reska and Gothal’s lifeless bodies fall into a heap.

“You will pay for that,” Martas said through gritted teeth.

“They already have, Mr. Ableton,” replied the girl. Then, in a voice like rushing water, “what will be your price?”

With a berserker’s scream, Martas leapt into action. He swung Allhammer up, smashing Fred’s jaw and sending him reeling backward, then came down and across, landing a blow on Tannel’s clavicle and allowing the follow through to practically cleave her body in two. Martas knelt beside her to finish the job by smashing her head with the top of his mace as if he were driving a stake. By now, Frederick had recovered and was attempting a battle cry with his ruined jaw as he lunged for Martas, his dagger clenched by his head and ready to strike. Martas threw Allhammer at his old friend, hitting him squarely in the chest and knocking him flat. Martas sprang up, grabbed his shield, and then plunged it into the ground underneath Fred’s neck, severing his head.

Martas retrieved Allhammer and crushed the three remaining heads of his former companions. Frederick’s was easy, but he had to will himself to do it to Reska and Gothal – he wasn’t convinced the creature could raise a corpse it didn’t create on its own, but there was no way to be sure. Their bodies were still so close to living that Martas felt as if he was delivering the killing blow himself, and, in a way, he thought, he had. It made him sick with pain, sorrow, and anger. When it was finished, he walked to the northern edge of his magic circle and bellowed, “I know what you are, Lich! Show yourself! Face me!”

The giggles started again, and a little girl in a yellow dress emerged from the darkness to stand just on the other side of the barrier. The girl smiled, showing not teeth but a mouth full of maggots, waved in the excited way most children do, and said, “hi Mr. Ableton.” Then Martas watched as she tossed her head back as if to laugh in earnest, but instead saw her mouth go impossibly wide as a slender, blackened hand with grotesque nails came forth and grabbed one side of the girl’s face, followed by another that mirrored the action. The hands began to separate, pulling the girl in half to reveal a white-haired corpse with Elvish features, dark robes, and eyes like pinholes that glowed a sickly yellow. The temperature suddenly dropped several degrees, the fire waned, and the smell of death was overwhelming. Blackened skin that matched the thing’s hands hung like a mask on the left side of its face, leaving the rest an exposed skull. It shouldn’t have been possible, but, somehow, the visage grinned. “Well, Mar-tas A-ble-ton,” the Lich said, pronouncing each syllable of the paladin’s name with slow deliberateness. “Here I am.”

“And there you’ll die!” With a flourish of his wrist, Martas dispelled the magic circle and swung Allhammer across his body and up toward the Lich’s head with all his might.

But the Lich lackadaisically reached out and caught the weapon in its decrepit hand. “Oh, Martas, you can’t hurt me with this.”

“I know,” Martas said, and reached up with his left hand, grabbed the Lich’s spine, and began chanting a spell he should have had no business knowing. Allhammer and the hand grasping the Lich’s physical form began to glow a strange yellow that was reminiscent of the Lich’s eyes.

“What!? No!” The Lich struggled frantically to free himself, but Martas held his grip, and ensured Allhammer remained pressed against his foe. “You…Oathbreaker!” The Lich let out a final, deafening scream as its power was absorbed into Allhammer, and the remaining withered husk turned to dust. Martas breathed a hearty sigh of relief, and immediately blacked out.

*******

Weeks later, Martas was seen going from town to town – always wearing a glove on his left hand, and armed not with Allhammer and his golden shield, but a broadsword he called Merriweather’s Heart – boasting of his accomplishment and inviting those intrepid enough to join him to pack their things and head to his new northern colony of Lichbane.

_Martas was both brave and strong, and Allhammer struck true.  
He saved us all from worse than hell, as only he could do._


End file.
